


That Which We Represent

by igrab



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:39:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2460254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He won't admit it, but it's the one constant in his life - no matter where in the world his winged sandals take him, he always sees the same sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which We Represent

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted to Livejournal on 2/17/2010
> 
> does not actually have anything to do with PJO aside from fitting in with the modern gods canon.

_1963_

Hermes waits, impatiently, for the last tipsy stragglers to clear out of the venue - a dark little jazz bar, on the south arm of Venice. No one sees him, let alone pays him any attention - they're all buzzing about the show, the show, _the singer_ , and of course they are. _Of course_. Hermes rolls his eyes.

He steps into the bar. Immediately, smoke swirls around him, and he can barely make out the three figures under the lights - two of them because they're fading into the shadows cast by the spotlight, but one because he's just too _bright_.

"You're glowing," he mouths as he leans on the table closest to the stage. "That's bad form, right there."

"Form, schmorm," the man says, and Hermes can see him _now_ , of course. Gold hair in a loose ponytail, flecked glass earrings from Murano, clothes the color of wine and midnight and _inhumanly good_ , like always. "You like it."

"Package for you," Hermes says with a faint hint of desperation. He knows what's coming, and sure enough, the man waves his hand in dismissal.

"Hang on, can't you see we're still packin' up? Jeez." But he smiles, and Hermes fights both the rush of impatience and the way that smile makes his stomach wiggle. _Stop that_. "Did you catch the show?"

He turns to start helping, and Hermes grips the table tighter so he doesn't follow him, restless, like a moth drawn inexplicably to the light. "No." It's a lie and they both know it.

He glances over his shoulder, with eyes still bright and hot from a performance high. Hermes feels his knees grow weak. "And?"

"And what?"

"And. What did you think?" He's packing up the instruments with loving care, now, and his fingers caress the cases in a blatant, filthy display, and Hermes thinks of the whores in Babylon, and Sicily. Not even they rated attention like this.

His breath is short in his chest, but he manages to speak - he _is_ the lord of communication, after all. "...Yes."

Oh. Wait. That didn't answer the question at all. "Um, it was very nice."

"An understatement, but I'll let it slide." The singer's eyes spark with a barely-suppressed amusement. "This time."

Hermes blows a long sigh out of his lungs. "Come on, stop this, um - " he glances around quickly to find out what name he's been playing under tonight. " - Paul. I really have a delivery to make, and then I need to go."

He hears a soft sound that could be a sigh, or could be a whimper, depending on the context, and he's _too good_ at that sort of thing. Isn't there a law against sounds like that? There should be. Also, smirking. That should be outlawed. "That's not exactly an incentive for me to accept, is it?"

"Just take. The stupid. Package." Hermes is all too glad that the bar is smoky enough to hide his blush - at least, from the mortals. _Apollo_ has no trouble seeing right through him.

And see he does, or rather, he _looks_ , with eyes quite literally scorching. Hermes feels his skin heating up everywhere that that gaze touches, from his cheeks, down the line of his neck, his chest, his hips. They linger there. "I don't see any package," the sun god purrs with a teasing grin, and _oh shit_ , Hermes knew he'd forgotten something. 

"It's - out in the car," he mutters lamely, because of course, he _has_ the package, he'd just forgotten to manifest it before coming in, and the Mist is already thin enough around here.

After a moment, though, he realizes that everyone is staring at him. _What? What is it? What did I say now?_

Apollo even _sighs_ gracefully. "Darling, allow me to remind you _where we are_."

Venice, of course. The tiny little island off the coast of - 

Oh. _Oh_. Hermes immediately clamps down on the urge to sink into the ground, right there, and disappear. "I..."

"Come on, I think it's high time we left."

Much to his intense embarrassment, Apollo wraps an arm around his waist, like he's used to it, like this is how they aways are, and Hermes has to fight that familiar crazy feeling of _rightness_ \- that this _is_ how it goes, how it went, how it _should_ be.

"Polly, stop it," he mutters, turning even redder. Belatedly he remembers the assumed name - but Paul, Polly, it's close enough. Apollo smiles and buries his nose in the mop of curly hair, and the sweetness burns more than the heat of his body, and Hermes _aches_.

"You're cute," Apollo whispers, for the god's ears alone. To the rest of the room, he waves. "So long."

The god of travelers, led along by the driver of the sun himself. It's either sweet or ironic, and Hermes stubbornly refuses to believe that it could possibly be both.

"Are you coming back to play with us any time soon, sir?" Hermes can practically see the lire counting up in the barman's head. But who could blame him? No one can compete with the God of Music.

Apollo gives him a flat, glassy look over the top of his apparent partner's head, and though his tone is perfectly courteous, the absence of warmth itself is what makes it so cutting. "I think not." Aptly, it's like the sudden chill of a cloud passing over the sun.

 _And so like the sun he is_ , Hermes thinks, more than a little desperate now and unwilling to untangle all the meanings of that particular word. _Warm and perfect - until you get too close_.

♬

They're halfway across the city before either of them speaks, and Apollo's arm is still latched absolutely to his hip, with no intention of releasing it any time soon. They stop across from a church - a big, beautiful, gargoyle-encrusted bitch. There's music soaking out of it - Vivaldi, and he almost chuckles. Apollo may pretend to turn his nose up at all his children accomplish, but somewhere under there, he's proud.

They stand there in the half-dark, though Apollo still somehow looks gold, and he doesn't cast a shadow. "Who's it from?"

"Artemis." Hermes sighs deeply. "She wants to know when you're coming back."

He stiffens.

"We all do. You're going to get a formal injunction from Zeus, soon enough. Do you have _any idea_ how long it took me to - "

Apollo interrupts him, and in all their years on Olympus, Hermes had never heard him sound anything less than utterly self-confident. He'd never heard him _uncertain_. Not like this. "I don't - I don't know."

They're gods. They're not all-powerful or all-knowing, and they certainly have as many limits and weakness as humans do - albeit different ones - but for the most part, they're expected to behave the way they've always behaved, do the things they've always done, because their natures are directly defined by that which they represent. Hermes can remember when Apollo wasn't the sun god. He can remember when his touch didn't burn.

But that's in the past.

He blows out the breath he's been holding and listens as the audience applauds. "You can't stay down here forever."

"Why not?" The line of his jaw is set when Hermes turns to look at him, and there's a defensive stubbornness to it, a child clinging to a favorite toy. "I do my job. I do my job all day, every day."

"I know you do." He won't admit it, but it's the one constant in his life - no matter where in the world his winged sandals take him, he always sees the same sun. "But that's not your only job."

"I'm _doing_ my job," he whispers as he tilts his head down, eyes dark and glittering and almost angry, though Hermes knows it's not at him. "The music isn't up there anymore, it's down here, it's running wild through these people like a terrible, beautiful disease. I'm just chasing it," and now he looks up, now Hermes can see how _broken_ he is and it almost, almost makes him wish he'd never come at all. "I'm chasing something that used to mine but it's everywhere, now. I'm losing."

Hermes doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what to say because he _always_ feels like that. He's always chasing down the future.

He wouldn't be what he represented, though, if he couldn't find an answer _somewhere_.

"I don't think it works like that," he says quietly, setting it out there in the center of the conversational floor and pulling back, waiting for the scared kitten of Apollo's self-esteem to come creeping out to investigate.

"...What do you mean?" It's ripping him apart, hearing the sun god so diminished. Hermes doesn't let it show. He _can't_ let it show.

"We're made up of everything we are." He isn't even sure if what he's saying makes any sense at all, but it has to, he has to get through to him somehow. "The music of the world - it's already a part of you. You don't have to... 'find' anything, you don't have to go looking, it's something that you bring with you. The only place you'll find it is inside yourself."

And it's the truth, he realizes. It's been the truth all along. He won't let on that it's as much of a revelation to _him_ , not when Apollo's eyes are lighting up, glowing with realization and understanding. Instead he hands over a package wrapped in deerskin, and twine, and smelling of moonlace.

"She told me to tell you - she loves you. Come home soon."

And she did say that, but he really means _I_ , and he wants Apollo home more than anything.

♬

It's the first day off he's had in months, and Hermes fully intends to spend it face down on his bed, doing _absolutely nothing_.

Someone had other plans.

He's still half asleep when he feels the bed dip on one side, and there's a vaguely familiar warmth along his back, but he can't remember, and gods, that's going to drive him crazy. _Where_ did he know that feeling? Then the weight shifts, like someone leaning on two limbs instead of one, and the heat at his cheek becomes nearly unbearable. He can't for the eternity of him figure out why.

"Rise and shine," a voice breathes at his ear, and oh - oh - _oh_. 

"Apollo?" he tries to roll over, tries to ignore the sudden frantic jumpstart of his heart, but there's another arm in the way. He's got him caged right in and when he laughs, it's like flames licking up the side of his neck. "What are you _doing_ here," Hermes moans, as he wakes up enough to remember that it's his day off, his goddamn _day off_ , and of course it's the day that Apollo chooses to make his grand entrance. His grand entrance right back to the way things were, where he teases and Hermes tries to tell himself he'd be better off without it, when the truth is, he only hates it because it's _not enough_.

"Come driving with me."

"It's _dawn_?"

"Mmhm." The notion is _utterly preposterous_ and Hermes can't even _imagine_ why Apollo would - 

He touches him. Just the tip of a finger - one scorching, beautiful golden finger at the hollow of his throat. "Come with me, and give me the strength to face the others at Council tonight."

He swallows, shakily. "You'll be fine. You're always fine." He makes a noise that's definitely a grunt of disapproval, all right, _not_ arousal - and buries his face under his pile of pillows. He sincerely hopes that it sends the clear message of _go away, please_ , because he really isn't sure he's capable of saying it out loud.

But then there's lips. He knows they're lips because Apollo's hands are accounted for, and nothing could be more unmistakable. They brush at the spot under his ear - delicate, at first, almost as if he's _shy_ \- and then a little more solidly, when Hermes doesn't stop him. Then they part and his tongue presses to the spot, _grinds_ down, and before he can stop himself Hermes jerks and moans in the back of his throat.

He can feel the smirk like a burning brand.

It's just on the edge of unbearable, far beyond what should theoretically be the threshold of pleasure and pain. So he shouldn't like it. It shouldn't make him squirm, but it _does_ , and Apollo sits on him, trapping his hips, and catching a wrist in one heated, supple hand. 

Hermes gasps with the sharp edge of a drowning man and he arches up against all that restraint, damn near _whimpering_ when he realizes how caught he is. "We're going to be _late_ ," he moans, but Apollo just laughs and shifts his hips and kisses him.

Oh, he really is drowning now. Drowning in fire. Drowning in lust, the way it pours over him and tightens his lungs; drowning in sensation and a _physicality_ that he hardly lets himself feel, even when he's done this before, with other people. Nothing's like this, nothing has ever made him _stop thinking_.

He isn't thinking now.

He sucks on Apollo's lip, tongues at him, bites and wriggles and pushes up against him, not really to get free but for the thrill of it. He's hot _all over_ and it's a calling heat, clawing for the answering warmth of another body. It's the one call he's really been ignoring, for such a long time now.

Their clothes disappear quite literally, and how to describe sex that would kill a mortal man? Hermes knows that Apollo can't do this with everyone. He has to keep control of himself, has to try harder than any other god, and _what a relief_ it must be, what freedom, not to have to watch himself for fear of spontaneous combustion. And he can't say he doesn't appreciate it, even if his skin will be red all over, everywhere they've touched. He can't say that he doesn't want more. It makes him arch and scream and cry out and wind his hands tight in Apollo's hair, like a lifeline, like he's standing on a bridge in Manila and he's never seen a city like this, and he looks up at the sun and feels anchored.

A good traveler finds home wherever he roams, and Hermes would be lying if he didn't say that his was in the sky.

♬

He wakes up to a hot nibble on the edge of his ear.

"...Did I really fall asleep?"

"You really fell asleep." Apollo looks _far too pleased with himself_. "I suppose I'm just that fantastic."

" _Sod off_."

Delighted, actually. It's not that he's smug or anything, and that's what's hard to believe, for a minute. But Apollo is really, honestly _delighted_. "No."

"You're insufferable."

"You love me."

He freezes.

The moment has the fragility of glass, and Hermes nearly trembles with holding himself still, like if he breathed too hard, it might all crumble. He doesn't see that Apollo is just as timid, just as quiet, just as anxious for a honest, true answer even though joking is all he knows.

But Hermes realizes that all he can possibly say is the truth.

"Yes," he whispers, eyes shut, his breaths shallow. "Yes, I do. Of _course_ I do." And then Apollo's kissing him again, and they're melting into each other, and Hermes is so _dizzy_. He breaks the kiss to laugh, because his lips are peeling a little, then he pulls back and opens his eyes and for what might just have been the first time in centuries - his face lights up in a true, honest smile.

He waits a beat, lets the moment present itself.

"...But you're still insufferable."

> I walked in streets that twisted through the night  
> Searching for a meaning I could hold  
> I paid my way in silver, then in gold  
> But nothing brought me closer to the light.  
> I trained my ears to do the work of sight  
> I walked on dark canals through bitter cold  
> I contemplated never growing old  
> And sang when speech deserted me for fright.  
> But then you came, like all of this was planned  
> You taught me where to look, that I was wrong  
> I'd hunted in in the darkness all along  
> You found the piece of daylight in my hand.  
> You've won this place, you've broken through this wall  
> And I am quite amazing after all.


End file.
